U.S. Department of Energy Research News

Public Release: 30-Nov-2012
ORNL develops lignin-based thermoplastic conversion process
Turning lignin, a plant's structural "glue" and a byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, into something considerably more valuable is driving a research effort headed by Amit Naskar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
Lawrence Livermore's Keane and Long elected AAAS Fellows
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Christopher Keane and Jane Long have been awarded the distinction of fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012

Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences
A human-caused climate change signal emerges from the noise
By comparing simulations from 20 different computer models to satellite observations, Lawrence Livermore climate scientists and colleagues from 16 other organizations have found that tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes are clearly related to human activities.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
2 Berkeley Lab scientists named AAAS Fellows
Susan Celniker of the Life Sciences Division and Wim Leemans of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been named 2012 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012

Science
X-ray laser helps fight sleeping sickness
An international group of scientists working at SLAC has mapped a weak spot in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, pinpointing a promising new target for treating a disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012
NREL updates solar radiation database
The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and collaborators released a 20-year updated version of the US National Solar Radiation Database, a web-based technical report that provides critical information about solar and meteorological data for 1,454 locations in the US and its territories.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Science
NREL researchers use imaging technologies to solve puzzle of plant architecture
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the BioEnergy Science Center combined different microscopic imaging methods to gain a greater understanding of the relationships between biomass cell wall structure and enzyme digestibility, a breakthrough that could lead to optimizing sugar yields and lowering the costs of making biofuels.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Nature
Tiny algae shed light on photosynthesis as a dynamic property
Many of the world's most important photosynthetic eukaryotes such as plants got their light-harnessing organelles (chloroplasts) indirectly from other organisms through endosymbiosis. In some instances, this resulted in algae with multiple, distinct genomes, some in residual organelles (nucleomorphs). To better understand why nucleomorphs persist after endosymbiosis, an international team including researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute collaborated to sequence and analyze two tiny algae. Their report appeared online Nov. 29, 2012 in Nature.

Public Release: 15-Nov-2012

Environmental Science and Technology
Airborne particles smuggle pollutants to far reaches of globe
Pollution from fossil fuel burning and forest fires reaches all the way to the Arctic, even though it should decay long before it travels that far. Now, lab research can explain how pollution makes its lofty journey: rather than ride on the surface of airborne particles, pollutants snuggle inside, protected from the elements on the way. The results will help scientists improve atmospheric air-quality and pollution transport models.

Department of Energy

Public Release: 14-Nov-2012
Traumatic brain injury patients, supercomputer simulations studied to improve helmets
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico are comparing supercomputer simulations of blast waves on the brain with clinical studies of veterans suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries to help improve helmet designs.

Office of Naval Research

Public Release: 12-Nov-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A better route to xylan
JBEI researchers have identified a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves both the extraction of xylan and the overall release of the sugars needed to make biofuels.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 12-Nov-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Erosion has a point -- and an edge, NYU researchers find
Erosion caused by flowing water does not only smooth out objects, but can also form distinct shapes with sharp points and edges, a team of New York University researchers has found. Their findings reveal the unexpected ways that erosion can affect landscapes and artificial materials.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 8-Nov-2012

Nature
More bang for the biofuel buck
Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that a fermentation process used in World War I to make cordite for bullets and artillery shells, in combination with a modern palladium catalyst could produce gasoline, diesel or jet fuel from the sugars found in biomass.

Energy Biosciences Institute

Public Release: 6-Nov-2012
Global metabolomic initiative announced
Investigators at Washington University and The Scripps Research Institute have announced the launch of a "Global Metabolomic Initiative" to facilitate meta-analyses on studies of the metabolism of bacteria, yeast, plants, animals and people. Although metabolomics has existed as a discipline for only a decade, it has already provided insights into many difficult-to-treat diseases, including chronic pain. Many more are expected to fall out of the meta-analyses.

National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Public Release: 5-Nov-2012
November 2012 story tips
Scientists have found that rising levels of ozone may amplify the impacts of higher temperatures and reduce streamflow from forests to rivers, streams and other water bodies. Recommendations to accelerate climate modeling to learn more about climate's regional ramifications and future effects. Research project to continue, providing additional data that could make houses of tomorrow even better. Ethanol blends of 10 to 25 percent could potentially have more fuel pump compatibility issues than higher blends.

Public Release: 1-Nov-2012

Cell Reports
Berkeley Lab scientists help develop promising therapy for Huntington's disease
There's new hope in the fight against Huntington's disease. Berkeley Lab scientists have helped design a compound that suppresses symptoms of the devastating disease in mice. The compound is a synthetic antioxidant that targets mitochondria, an organelle that serves as a cell's power plant. Oxidative damage to mitochondria is implicated in many neurodegenerative diseases.

Public Release: 31-Oct-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Folding funnels key to biomimicry
Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that a concept widely accepted as describing the folding of a single individual protein is also applicable to the self-assembly of multiple proteins. Their findings provide important guidelines for future biomimicry efforts, particularly for device fabrication and nanoscale synthesis.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 23-Oct-2012

ACS Synthetic Biology
Training your robot the PaR-PaR way
PaR-PaR, a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language developed by researchers at JBEI and Berkeley Lab, uses an object-oriented approach to make it easier to integrate robotic equipment into biological laboratories. Effective robots can increase research productivity, lower costs and provide more reliable and reproducible experimental data.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 21-Oct-2012

Nature Climate Change
Rice agriculture accelerates global warming, new research finds
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, coupled with rising temperatures, is making rice agriculture a larger source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, according to a study published today in Nature Climate Change by a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, plant scientist.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Irish Research Council, Marie Curie Actions

Public Release: 19-Oct-2012
Chemistry building at Brookhaven Lab named Historic Chemical Landmark
The New York Section of the American Chemical Society has designated the Chemistry Building at Brookhaven National Laboratory as an Historic Chemical Landmark for the synthesis of 18^FDG, a radiotracer that has had a revolutionary and global impact on cancer diagnosis and management and brain research.

Department of Energy Office of Science, National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012
New military apparel repels chemical and biological agents
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators are developing a new military uniform material that repels chemical and biological agents using a novel carbon nanotube fabric.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012

Environmental Health Perspectives
Elevated indoor carbon dioxide impairs decision-making performance
Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly impair people's decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.

State University of New York

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012
From form to function: 2013 DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program portfolio announced
For genomics researchers, the term "form to function" could be applied to the ongoing transition from not just studying an organism's genetic code to also understanding the roles those genes play. All the projects selected for the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute's 2013 Community Sequencing Program portfolio combine sequence data generation with large-scale experimental and computational capabilities to enable fuller functional genome annotation.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012

PLOS ONE
New insights into how genetic differences influence breast cancer risk from low-dose radiation
Scientists from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified tissue mechanisms that may influence a woman's susceptibility or resistance to breast cancer after exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, such as the levels used in full-body CT scans and radiotherapy.

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Jelly-like atmospheric particles resist chemical aging
"Our research provides the first experimental evidence that the chemical aging process of atmospheric particles is limited by phase," says principal investigator Scot Martin, at Harvard.

US Department of Energy, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science